Increasing numbers and types of devices are becoming portable and non-portable wireless devices. The proliferation of portable connected devices such as mobile phones, laptops, smart watches, tablets etc. as well as non-portable connected devices such as televisions, video game consoles, appliances, etc. have saturated many environments with radio frequency (RF) signals. Due to this proliferation of RF signals, connected devices receive many unwanted signals, called interferers, in addition to receiving desired RF signals from communication partner device(s). The interferers can occur in a random and unpredictable manner. For example, interferers can occur in the form of signal bursts of variable duration and have signal strengths possibly much higher than the desired signal at the receiving device. Interferers with a high signal strength can cause saturation of the receive circuitry thereby preventing proper reception of the desired data.
Many prior solutions have addressed this interferer issue by continuously monitoring the received signal strength and immediately adjusting amplifier gains to avoid saturation while still maintaining sensitivity levels for the receiving device. However, when operating within popular wireless communication protocols such as IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.11 protocols for Wireless Personal Area Networks (e.g., WiFi) or IEEE 802.15.4 protocols for Wireless Personal Area Networks (e.g., Bluetooth, Zigbee), the receiver is often not allowed by these protocols to adjust gain during reception of the data payload. Due to these limitations, prior receiver solutions for these communication protocols adjust the gain during a time interval prior to the payload reception. This gain adjustment is typically based upon the real-time received signal, and the gain adjustment is fixed just before switching to the payload reception period. The inability to perform gain adjustments during payload reception, however, can cause degradation in receiver performance. For example, due to their random nature in occurrence and strength level, interferers may appear during payload reception and cause saturation of the receive circuitry resulting in data loss due the inability to adjust the fixed gain settings set prior to the payload reception period.